2013 Hanoi: Ha Long Bay

Thursday and Friday we made the appropriate tourist step of visiting Ha Long Bay. The trip from Ha Noi is about 180 km which means roughly 4 hrs by Vietnamese traffic flow standards. We were picked up by bus at our hotel at 8 am Thursday, and arrived at the bay for our overnight cruise on a junk by around noon. We returned to Ha Noi by around 16:30

We had a very pleasant tour guide whose English was not perfect but he was very friendly and tried very hard to be funny. "Long" is the Vietnamese word for dragon, and Ha Long means descending dragon. This is in contrast to the traditional motto of Ha Noi which is Thang Long or rising dragon. Ha Noi, by the way, means city in between rivers (for obvious reasons). Also we learned that Hanoi has grown from 3 million people and 1000 square km to around 7 million and 3000 sqaure km in the last 4 years. This explains the traffic -- which I expect to be back at full force on Monday.

Ha Long bay is a Unesco world heritage site and was recently voted as one the the 7 natural wonders of the modern world. It is approximately 1500 square km in size, with 1900 or so islands and apparently would take up to 5 days to completely visit by boat alone. As with most things in Vietnam the harbour was exceptionally busy with people and boats and February is the off season. I cannot imagine the misery in the summer months though the view would have been better with the sun rather than the fog. We arrived by water taxi to our overnight junk. We checked into our room and then had an excellent Vietnamese lunch. We then took a cruise through the bay for about 1 hr arriving at a natural cave. We hiked the natural cave after water taxi transfer, then there was a chance to go kayaking in the bay (which we declined due to the kids) and a stay at a beach for swimming. Noah braved the icy waters of winter.

Back on board our boat we were instructed in how to make spring rolls and then enjoyed these and other vietnamese foods for dinner. Karaoke was available after dinner (this appears to be a very popular pass time based on the number of karaoke bars in Hanoi), but we took the kids to our cabin and slept.

The next day was breakfast, a further cruise through the bay, and then lunch before returning to our bus for transport back to the hotel in Hanoi. Certainly an experience not to be missed in Vietnam.

Lots of pictures of the Ha Long bay trip below and maybe a behaviour update with pictures and videos tomorrow.